Tales from the Back of the Boat – Pre Fish Fun

A change in tone is in order for this installment of Tales I think. Rather than drone on about my woes and misfortunes I thought we would have a look at an area of bream tournament fishing that attracts a diverse range of views….the Pre-fish.

The Pre-fish Day always brings about much discussion at tournaments. For some, a good pre-fish day is essential to set up the weekend. Finding and catching bream the day before the comp can instill great confidence in an angler. You know where the fish could be, you know the pattern of lure that has been successful and a sense of how the bite will be. You have the basis for a plan of attack on comp days and now it’s down to careful execution.

But then you have the flipside. You never saw a fish all day, nothing seemed to work and even worse, you learn later everyone else had a great prefish. Such a scenario does put an angler in a tough place before a comp. Add to that those anecdotes from fellow fisho’s who if they have a good prefish “never have a good tournament” and vica versa and before you know it the bream are messing with your head and you haven’t even started yet!

In an effort to try an rationalize the pre-fish day I was lucky enough to score a pre-fish ride with Berkley Pro Team member Mark Mangold at the recent Mallacoota ABT event in Victoria. It was the first time I had fished southern waters and I was keen to give the big Black Bream a crack. No undersized yellowfin bream for me this time! See what I mean…bream messing with my head already.

The fist stop was some fifty metres off a rocky headland, a spot we had heard had thrown up a few fish earlier in the week. Mark chose to give one of the new Berkley MF40 soft vibes a run and I plumped for a 3 inch Gulp Fry in Lime Tiger colour.

Here’s where the rationalization of the pre-fish began. Two anglers with two very different methods. Remember we are looking for patterns here so take advantage of having two lines in the water. We also fished in opposite directions form the boat and rotated every few minutes. And just for good measure we also swapped methods, just to see if differences in techniques had an impact. As it was the first fish fell to Mark using the Gulp Fry and I dropped one on the vibe seconds later.

It was at that moment we did perhaps the hardest thing in that situation, we stopped fishing. Fish were present so time was taken to note the how and the where. Fishing the lure very slowly was the first box ticked and the makeup of the bottom was noted, both visually and on the sounder. Here it was the classic patches of broken shell and rock in amongst the weedbeds. Water depth was around ten feet and reasonably clear with no real contour features or drop-offs. A move to a spot some 300m away showed similar conditions and again the techniques in the first spot provided results. The time was noted to assess the tide conditions, and a quick check of the weather saw us note that areas exposed to the winter sun seemed to have more life about them rather than those in shade.

After spending a few minutes reflecting the decision was taken to try somewhere completely different. Using the Lowrance sounder we found a gentle drop off with the water running from about 14 feet to about 25 feet. One thing I must comment on is the clarity of the image the new Lowrance colour sounders produce. All my pre bream fishing was done with high quality black and white sounders which I thought were delivering the goods but the image on these units is astounding. The bottom of this particular spot was uninspiring but if you look at the picture opposite you’ll get an idea of what we were also hoping to see…bait!

That huge bait ball passed under the boat and you can see a few larger fish hovering underneath. These indeed turned out to be bream and using both the Berkley Big Eye blade and the MF40 Soft Vibe saw results. Again the fishing stopped and we took stock of our surroundings and the conditions. Although different methods were used, fishing the lure very slow seemed to be the key. A quick tap on the Lowrance saw the spot marked on the GPS.

The day continued in much the same vein and as we motored back to the ramp a pattern was becoming clear. Fish slow, a lure with a touch or orange, fish around 10 to 14 feet, look for broken weedbeds around the edges and good bait showings in more open water. Sure, it could all change tomorrow but it was the foundation for a plan come comp day.

So here are Gatesy’s tips for a pre-fish from my “fings wot I hav lernt” book. They apply to boaters and non boaters alike…remember we’re all in this together!

1. The fish doesn’t matter so much. It’s where you find it that counts. Note everything about that spot, the how, why and where. Your looking for patterns here but note anything peculiar to eg: Fish took lure whilst it was sitting on the bottom ‘cos I was having a coffee etc.
2. Try to resist the urge to keep fishing the same type of spots. Move around. Its just as important to know what areas are not working as well as which areas are.
3. Use your sounder! Seems obvious but that is what its there for. Having a cuppa whilst pottering along is not wasting time if your keeping an eye on the sounder. Its research! Watch and learn.
4. Above all RELAX! There will be enough to think about on comp days. Enjoy the day out and be open minded. A rod rigged with a Nitro jighead, one with a Big Eye blade and one with a MF40 soft vibe will give you three different types of fishing immediately on hand. Give each one a whirl even if it’s not how you would normally fish…you never know!

And if it doesn’t work for you on the day don’t panic. You will still have a good range of spots that you know about and keep in mind the oft quoted “you should have been here yesterday!” line works both ways. They could be there tomorrow.

So did our pre-fish deliver on the day? Well Mark just hung off the top ten and had a particularly good second day where one of the spots we had marked turned on for an hour or so and gave Mark in his words “the best hours bream fishing of his life”. Interestingly as noted above, the fish weren’t there day before but the spot had commonalities with others that had produced.

As you would have seen from the Pro Blog it was Team Berkley’s Brad Hodges that won the event that weekend, secured with a cracking 5kg+ bag on the second day. I actually fished with Brad that day and it was only a few minutes in that Hodgey bravely predicted that someone that day would return a 5kg bag. I think he was pretty happy it was him!

Finally I have mentioned patterns several times in this blog. How about this for a pattern over three recent events – Tweed ABT Russell Babekuhl, Port Macquarie ABT Scott Towner, Mallacoota ABT Brad Hodges.

I’ll let you work it out.

Until next time

Gatesy

Ps Big thanks to Pro Team member Mark Mangold for the pre-fish and his knowledge but more importantly given the cold, the loan of his pants for the comp. No…not those pants thankyou, wet weather pants.